Nejad, who normally hosts Poker After Dark, took center stage in this episode with his many antics.  One of them included pulling out champagne glasses and toasting to Joe Sebok being on a televised poker table.  The joke was made because of Sebok’s habit of bubbling out right before the final table in several major live tournaments.  Some of the tourneys Sebok has bubbled out in before the final table include the WPT Fiest al Lago, the 2007 Legends of Poker, and the Bay 101 Shooting Star.

And while there were many jokes to be had during this special version of Poker After Dark, the action was anything but a joke with blinds set at $100/$200.  Sebok was able to make a move early after taking down a pot of 7,900 chips against Gabe Kaplan.  However, Sebok quickly became a target when Mark Gregorich held pocket aces.  Gregorich fired out a 3,000 chips bet on a weak board while holding pocket aces; this made Sebok fold and brought the action to a close.

But there will be much, much more action in Season 6 of Poker After Dark since there are 35 episodes left.  And there are 5 episodes left in the Commentators III segment so it will be fun to see who comes out the big winner among the announcers!

Unfortunately for Gilbert, he racked up a $25,000 debt to Crittenton as the two have been playing.  According to sources, Arenas has been slow to pay his gambling debts which resulted in a huge feud between Jaravis and him.  Things boiled over on a team flight when the two started arguing with Crittenton screaming out, “I’m not your punk!”  A couple of days later, Arenas placed 3 guns by Crittenton’s locker and told him to pick one. 

But nothing even compares to what happened a few days ago when the two teammates pulled out guns on each other.  Luckily, things didn’t go any further than the two pulling out the guns, but it was definitely a bad experience for the entire Wizards organization.

Since the gun incident, Arenas has had to do some backpedaling in an attempt to save his 6-year, 111 million dollar contract.  He told reporters that him and Crittenton are still friends in addition to saying about the situation, “I can’t speak on that.  But if you know me, you’ve been here, I’ve never done anything (involving) violence.  Anything I do is funny…..well, it’s funny to me.”

He also said that the guns were in the locker room because he didn’t want his kids to get a hold of them.  He stated this by saying, “That’s bad judgement on my part to store them in here, and I take full responsibility for that.  I have to deal with the police investigation.”

And Harrah’s is replacing this tournament with another $50k event so people probably won’t care too much.  The event that will be replacing the H.O.R.S.E. tourney is the $50,000 Mixed Event.  The Mixed Event includes all kinds of poker games like Seven Card Razz, Omaha Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo, Seven Card Stud, No Limit Hold’em, Limit Hold’em, Pot Limit Hold’em, and 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball.

Another huge change is that many of the mid-range buy-in Omaha and Stud events are gone with lots of $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys taking their place.  The most obvious reason for this move is because few people played in the mid-level Stud and Omaha tournaments so the decision was made to get rid of them.  Taking their place will be six $1,000 No-Limit Hold’em tourneys.  Harrah’s is trying to use the momentum of last year’s Stimulus Special, where 6,102 people signed up, to bring in more players.

One more move that is sure to be unpopular is Harrah’s decision to take a 10% rake instead of a 9% rake from the $1,000 and $1,500 tournaments.  Players definitely won’t like this since the money will be coming directly out of their prize pools.

It hasn’t even been more than a few months now since Korotki’s win that we’re seeing another man win a female poker tourney.  This time it is Greg Sessler who was able to defeat 95 other players at a WSOP Circuit Event en route to his “big victory”.

Sessler entered a $340 “Lake Tahoe Ladies Championship” tourney, and was able to walk away with the win as well as $9,900 after everything was said and done.  And plenty was said during the tourney too since other men decided to enter this supposedly women’s-only event.  The crowd started cheering every time a male player was eliminated from the tournament – little did they know though that a man would be the one to win it.

After taking down the women’s championship in Lake Tahoe, Sessler commented afterwards by saying that he only wanted to find a place to play poker during his day off.  Conveniently, it just happened to be a ladies-only event that he decided to use as his place to play poker.

The WSOP wanted to clear themselves of the mess created by the win and issued a statement saying, “The WSOP isn’t a political organization and can’t be expected to get involved in debates about sexism, discrimination, or other polarizing issues which may be applicable to poker tournaments.”

Due to her impressive resume, and great looks, Kara Scott has now been named the new hostess of High Stakes Poker.  With this announcement, all the speculation of other people being named the host will finally come to an end.  At one point, rumors were swirling around that Vanessa Rouso would be the next person to host High Stakes Poker.  Most of these unfounded rumors came from poker forums, but still they took off in a big way.  Since Kara Scott has been named the host, we now know that there is no truth to these rumors.

With Scott taking over at HSP, she’ll be teaming up with Gabe Kaplan which should be very interesting.  Kaplan and A.J. Benza were a fantastic commentary team, but the Game Show Network decided to disband the team in favor of brining in a younger, female co-host.  Long-time fans of the show are still puzzled as to why they would break up this team, but one big reason could be that GSN is looking for a more general audience.  Kara Scott could certainly bring that bigger general audience.

Apparently, GSN wants to bring in a younger, attractive female host to take Benza’s place on the show; there’s been no word on who this woman will be, though some speculated Vanessa Rouso.  Benza was pretty outraged by GSN’s decision to fire him and said something on his blog about, “if you got the best pizza in town for 5 seasons, why add licorice to it?”

I think he definitely has a point here since Kaplan and Benza have played off of each other pretty well during the show’s first 5 seasons.  Bringing in an entirely different person to take Benza’s place will definitely shake things up, and it might not end up being in a good way.  All I know is that High Stakes Poker did fine in the past with just Benza and Kaplan doing the announcing.

Of course the suits at GSN probably think that the change will help draw a wider audience.  And I can kind of see their point since so many men are drawn to the game of poker and the vast majority of them would probably rather see Vanessa Rouso’s face (for example) than Benza’s.  If this move does end up attracting a bigger viewership then I guess it’s all good in the end.

The obvious reason for why Hungary wants to legalize poker and regulate it is because they want to make some tax revenue from the deal.  If all goes according to plan, Hungary stands to raise around 1 million Euros in tax money right off the bat from this move.  Unfortunately, the details to the plan have not been fully worked out yet so there is some work to be done before everything is official.

One problem is that certain people want to put big limitations on live club poker and this calls for a limit of 10 tables in each venue along with low level entry fees.  I’m not exactly sure why Hungary wants to do this, but I just know many are concerned that this will drive all of the high profile players away from the country and keep others from wanting to play there.

The Hungarian Poker Association is particularly concerned because they think the goal should be to try and attract more high profile players to the country.  The organization believes that strict regulations will force most residents to continue their poker days online.  I think it’s unfortunate that Hungary wants to do it this way to and the plan really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me in the end.

I saw this trend after reading about a study done by the National Poker Association (not quite the PPA) that revolved around a Hungarian pro by the name of Peter Trapley.  Trapley, like many successful online players before him, has made an outstanding living over the past couple of years by playing online poker.  He’s earned over $500,000 and has only just recently graduated from college. 

And sure $500k over a few years isn’t amazing when compared to the exploits of durrrr and Patrik Antonius, but you’ve also got to keep in mind that Trapley is from Hungary.  Hungary has a 10% unemployment rate and the average salary in this nation is about $6,800 a year.  So if you’re making $500k over a few years then you’re pretty much a millionaire in Hungary.

Seeing as how stories of people like Trapley have made it around Hungary, there are plenty of other people there trying to make poker their primary job now.  In fact, 1 out of every 40 Hungarians consider online or live poker to be a job which means 250,000 of the country’s 10 million residents are using the felt for income.  It won’t be long before we start seeing this trend show up in the WSOP and other big tourneys.

In addition to his playing abilites, Shulman is also well known throughout the poker community as the prime owner of Card Player Magazine.  Seeing as how Shulman has plenty of fame and accolades on his poker resume already – not to mention $2.6 million in live winnings – you think he’d be satisfied with his own level of play.

However, Shulman isn’t resting on his laurels or taking any chances since he as decided to hire 11-time WSOP gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth to coach him before the Main Event final table.  Now some people might find this odd that Shulman would hire a coach since he is already a successful player himself.

But Shulman summed up his choice to have Hellmuth coach him before the final table saying, “The simplest reason why I’m doing this…..I want to win, and I think it will help.”  He also added an important point by mentioning, “I turned on the TV and I was watching Tiger Woods or something, and I realized every single player has a coach.  No matter how good or bad my game is, it can always get better.”

The choice to pick Phil Hellmuth as his coach goes beyond the obvious reason of Phil being arguable the most successful WSOP player of all-time.  Shulman also chose Phil because they’ve been business partners and friends for a number of years.  If Hellmuth’s coaching does propel Shulman to victory, hopefully he won’t trash his WSOP bracelet like he’s stated he would do in the past.